It is known to provide electrical connectors with means for securing the connector to a printed circuit board. Often, the connector has a molded thermoplastic housing and a boardlock means is formed integral therewith. The connector is secured temporarily on the printed circuit board by the boardlock until electrical connections are made, as by soldering. The boardlock holds a connector mounting face firmly in contact with the printed circuit board until permanently secured thereagainst, such as a result of the soldering process.
A popular form of boardlock is a snap latch for securing a connector block or housing to the printed circuit board. The snap latch typically is a molded plastic peg which is bifurcated to define a pair of resilient legs having latching barbs or hooks thereon. The legs, during insertion through a hole in the printed circuit board from a first side of the board, deflect inwardly toward the axis of the snap latch. As the hooks on the ends of the legs pass through the hole in the board, the legs snap back outwardly into a position with shoulders on the hooks extending beyond the periphery of the hole and engaging a second side of the board, thereby securing the connector to the board. The pegs usually are an integral part of the connector housing or, in some instances, separate metal snap latches have been used.
Such snap latch boardlocks described above have proven quite effective when employed with relatively large holes in the printed circuit board. However, with the ever-increasing miniaturization of electronic components, miniature snap latches of the bifurcated peg type have proven to be extremely fragile, prone to breakage, unstable and lacking in sufficient retention capabilities. This problem of breakage is particularly prevalent with the brittle plastic material which presently is used quite often in molding connector housings, even when the boardlock peg is not extremely miniaturized. With such brittle materials, the pegs are even prone to breakage when simply inserted into the hole in the printed circuit board. The present invention is directed to solving these problems in a typical bifurcated mounting peg by reducing the deflection required to insert the peg into the hole in the circuit board.